章 32: Check-in and Dine-in
By the time they reached their hotel, they were already well past the time they expected to have dinner. It was a little troubling for Arata, since they had missed their reservation for the restaurant he had picked out. Which was a shame, since he really wanted to try out their famous ice cream. Plus, at this time it was unlikely for them to find one with an open table for all of them.
Tired from both the trip and his run to fix the bus. Arata slumped on up to the hotel front desk. The others had yet to enter, catching a break as soon as they got off the bus. Unfortunately for him, being in charge meant he was the one that had to do the rest of the work.
"Hello sir, how may we help you?" The clerk at the desk greeted him with a smile.
"I'm here to check in… The name should be under Kashimura." Hine had told him that it was under his name. She was planning on having him in charge from the start it seemed.
"Let's see here… Ah I see you have three rooms reserved, but um…"
"Oh everyone else is just outside. We're all just really tired from out trip is all."
"I see." He replied. "I'll just call service and we'll help get all your things up to your room as soon as possible." Arata thanked the man, then he promptly found the nearest seat so he could finally relax a little.
Soon, the others also entered as the employees gathered their belongings. When they walked up to him, he was lying exhausted on the bench he found.
"So… What are we going to do about food?" Erina poked and prodded him to get back up. He didn't respond at first.
"She is right." Said Misao. "Ms. Omachi had to cancel our reservation because of how late we were coming in."
"Yes. And unfortunately I don't believe we'll be able to find ourselves a table at any respectable establishment at this hour." Asasuzu Omachi added in.
Arata didn't want to think about it. All he wanted to do was get to bed and sleep. Being charge though, that wasn't going to happen. If this kept up all vacation, they were going to run him ragged.
Still he accepted this responsibility, reaching into his pocket for his notebook. He had been taking notes of the area before they had left, so he had addresses of important places, along with numbers for food.
"I guess we can order out." He said, scanning for what seemed good to him.
"Oh, that sounds like a wonderful idea." Said Asasuzu. "You can even use that money you were going to return me." He realized that he forgot to give her back her money. Sure she said he could've kept it, but that wasn't his intention. He figured that'd she just give it back to make this payment, so it didn't matter.
"Well then, we should get to ordering." Arata was swarmed by everyone, asking him what they wanted for dinner. The chatter of young and old alike was really annoying him.
"Hold on everyone!" He yell at them to get back. "I'm in charge, and that means everyone's listening to me." He didn't want to be the bad guy, but he was really tired of working right now. "Sorry, just can someone else order the food."
He chose Misao to do it. Mostly because she already knew what most of the others wanted. She was also getting along with the elders, getting their orders.
"I should have everything in order now." She told him.
"All right then, here you go." He handed her his notebook containing all the numbers she needed. "Also, whatever place serves it, but I'd like some fried skewers, every types of it."
"Okay then. Um, maybe you can stay down here. This sounds like it's going to be a lot to carry all by myself." She requested.
"I'm sure you can figure something out." He just wanted to get straight to bed, and lay down. He joined the others, where they were waiting for the elevator.
"I don't understand, it doesn't seem to be working." Misei commented.
"Ah so sorry." The desk clerk came to them. "Our elevators are broken at the moment, so you must take the stairs. Our most sincerest apologies."
"Oh that's too bad." Said Akaki. "So what floor are we staying on?"
"I always make sure we get the top floors whenever we travel." Asasuzu answered.
"She means to say that we got a lot of stairs to climb." Monju continued in irritation. "We've got 20 flights of stairs to walk up."
"Okay then, I'll just wait down here for the food." There was no way in Hell he was doing that right now. "Uh, you guys just go on ahead. I'll help out Misao." He left to return to her.
Meanwhile, she had already begun dialing numbers. Reaching out to the various places that they wanted to order from. It was times like this, that she really wished they at least had more similar tastes.
Since she believed him to be gone, she was flipping through the pages of this notebook while asking the order. It didn't seem to be anything special, just random journal entries from when he was younger. She figured he must've just grabbed this from some pile at home to prepare for this trip.
Things were normal until she chanced onto a certain page. She didn't read the contents, but rather what was on the bottom corner that caught her eye. A heart? Inside it had the letters 'A + Y'. She could assume Arata was the 'A', but who was the Y?
"Ha, funny story." Arata walked up, giving her a fright. "Elevator doesn't work, so I guess I'm sticking with you."
"O-oh yeah I guess so." She said, trying to keep cool about nearly getting caught.
"You don't sound that happy about it. Didn't you just ask me to stay in the first place?" He peered over to his notebook. It was clearly not on the same page he left it at for her. "Hey, what are you doing?!" He grabbed for it, she swiftly pulled it out of his grasp.
"Hold on…" She told him to be silent, so she could finish up the last order. He waited for her to put her phone down before speaking up again.
"What are you doing? You can't just snoop on other people's stuff." He was pretty upset. She seemed like a trustworthy person, but in this competition. Trusting others, even for simple things, just wasn't viable.
"I'm not looking for dirt. I would never stoop so low." Arata was wishing that certain other people were like her, if she was telling the truth. "I imagine this was just some notebook you had lying around, so there would be nothing important in it."
"Yeah, I doubt I wrote anything meaningful in it."
"Except maybe one thing." She showed him the page she took an interest in. "You remember this?"
"What the?" His eyes were drawn to the same place as hers when she noticed it. That small heart with those letters. "When did I draw that?"
"Maybe more importantly, who's 'Y'?" She asked. If this was Erina, she'd have a smug look on her face to tease him. But being Misao, this was more of an inquiring look. Seeing this gave her more questions than she knew what to do with.
"How am I supposed to know? I was very young when I probably made that."
"Or maybe that's not the case?" He could only return a confused look back to her. "I'm the one that said you had it lying around. You never claimed anything about this notebook."
"Well you were right, I didn't deny you."
"But it would be a convenient excuse, you can't deny that."
"No, I guess it would be, but I'm telling you. I really did just find it lying around in my house." He pleaded with her. However, he was curious about why he wrote that in the first place.
"Maybe you did write this recently. I think the two of us both know a 'Y' in our life, right?" Unless he was playing for a different team, there was only one person that fit that name. "You like Yuriko, don't you?"
"Oh no, you've got it all wrong." He was flabbergasted. All he wanted to do was rest while waiting for food. Now here he was, trying to defend himself from this odd accusation.
"I don't know. After all, you have been spending a lot of time with her." She explained her position. "I know I accused you of that before. Then it was because I thought you were trying to take out some competition, but it wouldn't be a surprise if you truly fell for her."
"Look, that's not it at all. I don't know what girl I might've had a crush on back then. I do know that I didn't write it with Yuriko in mind." He was telling the truth. It was a mystery who that girl might've been.
"Ahh…" She sighed, they would be going nowhere with this if it continued on. "This is pointless, I don't have any evidence, so I don't have a way to prove it."
"And you won't find any, because it's just not true." In his head, he was wondering when he might've written it. It had to have been before he got beat up, since there was no way he'd do something like then afterwards.
Thinking about it made him a little sad. That his younger self even had feelings like that, only to be where he was now. This was like learning how much of a disappointment he was be to his past self.
Looking over to Misao, he was a little surprised that she sounded so upset about it. If it was true, would it really be that big of a deal? At least that what he would've thought from her point-of-view.
All this thinking was starting to tire him out even more than before. Thankfully, the food delivery had arrived. So soon, he was going to enjoy a nice meal. His happiness was soon crushed as they reached the elevator and he remembered one problem.
"Oh why me?" It was time to climb 20 flights of stairs.
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